Le Obbligazioni Bancarie Nel Portafoglio Delle Famiglie Italiane (Bank Bonds in Italian Householdss Portfolios)

Bail‐in rules and the pricing of Italian bank bonds

“…First, as pointed out by Santos (), ‘unique’ features of bonds such as floating rates and call options can affect bond pricing. Second, non‐structured senior bonds are the most common type of bonds in Italian households’ portfolios (Coletta & Santioni, ) and, more importantly, this allows us to measure the yield to maturity at issuance, which ultimately represents the effective cost of funding borne by the banks. Since our goal is to study the impact that the adoption of the BRRD has generated on the cost of funding borne by the banks when issuing bonds, we refer exclusively to the returns offered in the primary market − following the approach used, among others, by Morgan and Stiroh () and Sironi ().…”

“…We believe that Italy is an interesting laboratory for testing the effect of the new bail‐in rules on bank funding costs for several reasons. First, Italian banks are quite dependent on bonds as a form of funding compared to banks in other European countries (Coletta & Santioni, ). In addition, the portion of bank bonds in Italian retail investors’ portfolios is rather greater than the average of developed countries (Coletta & Santioni, ; Grasso, Linciano, Pierantoni, & Siciliano, ).…”

“…Second, Italian banks place most of their bonds (around 80%) directly with their customers over the counter (OTC) (Coletta & Santioni, ; Gentile & Siciliano, ), thus avoiding the costs associated with the listing of these securities and, more importantly, this gives rise to an obvious conflict of interest. As a consequence, unsophisticated retail investors are the main holders of the banks’ debt securities (Grasso et al, ).…”

Banks as patient lenders: Evidence from a tax reform

“…The difference is partly made up by bank bonds, which in Italy represented about 22.5% of total assets in 2011, half of which are held by households (Coletta and Santioni 2016). In terms of size, deposits are equally split in each of the three size categories (below €50,000, between €50,000 and €250,000, and above €250,000), each representing roughly one-third of total deposits.…”